The Notebook
by Bookdancer
Summary: (That's Not a Romance Movie) The story of John Winchester's journal and the story that's hidden inside. "He never wrote about himself. He thought about it at first, ... but then he decided not to. If he had, maybe he would have seen the changes that occurred in himself over the next twenty-two years just as well as he had seen the ones in Sam and Dean." One-Shot


_Wow. I can't believe this is happening. This is my first ever Supernatural fanfic. Thank you to my Creative Writing Club for the object prompt. Without seeing that notebook this would never have gotten written because I never would have gotten the idea._

_I do not own Supernatural._

The Notebook

(That's Not a Romance Movie)

It didn't really start out as anything special. It was just a notebook. It was brown, had three spirals holding everything together, and inside were dozens of blank pages just begging to be filled.

So John filled them. He had gotten the notebook just after Mary died, and by the time the first two weeks of agony and grief were over he had already written in close to thirty pages. He wrote about the thing that killed his wife, about how he didn't know what it was exactly, but that it was powerful and had some kind of telekinesis (because there was no way Mary would have stayed on the ceiling like that without something holding her up - and John knew that there was nothing).

After that he wrote about Dean. His little four year old took up about fifteen pages all by himself, and John found himself wondering just how he was going to raise him and still hunt down the thing that killed his wife. The answer would come, years later, after he had already trained Dean in the art of killing monsters, hustling pool, and forging fake credit cards and IDs.

Sammy was next. To his disappointment, the majority of what he wrote in the beginning was all about the thing that killed Mary and why he had killed her in Sammy's room. It was when he began to question his own son (who was only six months old, his heart would attempt to protest) that he ripped the pages out, shredded them, and used them as fuel in the fire to keep his tiny family warm.

He never wrote about himself. He thought about it at first, thinking that maybe he should, just to keep record, but then he decided not to. If he had, maybe he would have seen the changes that occurred in himself over the next twenty-two years just as well as he had seen the ones in Sam and Dean.

Years passed, and John found himself keeping a tight hold on the notebook. 'It's Dad's Journal,' he would tell his sons. 'Don't touch it.'

Along the way he stopped writing so much about his family and began keeping tabs on the monsters they hunted. He wrote about wendigos, about spirits and salt-and-burns, about women in white and eventually he began writing about demons.

It was when Dean was twelve and Sammy was eight that blood first appeared on the notebook's pages. It was their first encounter with a werewolf, and not a very good one.

He spent one and a half weeks sleeping by Dean's bedside in the hospital, Sammy tucked into his older brother's side and still looking at them both like they were the ones who raised the sun each morning.

Sammy was twelve when he stopped looking at John like that, but John didn't bother putting it in the notebook - it was already stamped on his heart.

Two years later Dean graduated, and John tried to ignore the way Sam frowned at him when he said he would be interviewing the only witness of their current hunt instead of going to support his eldest. Dean didn't say anything, but John wondered if Dean would have if he had seen the entry his father made in the notebook late that night. John bet Sam wouldn't have frowned if he had been allowed to read it, too.

His fallout with Bobby only took up one page, and at the very bottom he wrote in all caps: DON'T GO TO SOUTH DAKOTA.

Sam was almost seventeen when he became one of the reasons John couldn't stop writing. It was that same day that John realized that every time he couldn't stop writing was because he was so mad he just couldn't let go of the pencil or pen without previously pouring out everything he was feeling into the notebook. He didn't look at his youngest son the next morning, even when he saw the frowns that Dean kept directing at him. That night, he made an addition to his initial entry: First time we've fought for more than six hours.

Flagstaff came and went, and John did his best to ignore the notes he had made in the margins, the majority of them crossed out. The ones that hadn't been marked over were the ones that weren't places he had suspected Sam to have gone. It was the first time he allowed someone other than himself to touch the notebook. Dean had done all of the crossing out.

The first time he ever threw the notebook was when Sam left for Stanford. John wrote the words he had said to his son in the journal to act as a reminder of what - _who_ - he had lost. The notebook left a dent in the wall of the motel room they had been occupying, but that wasn't the reason it was never thrown again. He never lost Sam again, either.

The next three and a half years flew by in a blur of Adam, solo hunts, almost getting his arse shot full of buckshot, drinking himself drunk, and finally driving into a tiny town in California called Jericho.

That was where he left his notebook, now stuffed full to the brim in notes. It was finished. It was no longer his. Now it was Sam and Dean's.

_I really do hope you all enjoyed. Please keep in mind, however, that I have not yet caught up completely, so if you want to review please no spoilers beyond the first few episodes of Season Six._

_Now please, carry on and review! This wayward writer would really appreciate it. :)_


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